


stupid

by viscrael



Category: Butterfly Soup (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Crushes, F/F, Pining, angst there r at the end but mostly just them being ridiculous, slightly aged up (junior/seniors instead of freshmen)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 21:17:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14656413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: Her eyes glowed yellow, her pupils dark slits; at the end of each finger was a sharp, claw-like nail meant for tearing into flesh; holding together those fingers was translucent webbing the same shade of brown as the rest of her skin. The slits on either side of her neck moved when she took a breath, and the scales on her cheekbones, shoulders, and forearms shone pink under the setting sun.Most obvious of all, of course, was the tail.Akarsha, tired now of laughing, pulled herself up onto the pier. “Hi,” she said simply.“You’re intolerable,” Noelle said.





	stupid

**Author's Note:**

> i wld die for akarsha and noelle

The sun was beginning to set.

Noelle kept her bag close to her side as she walked the length of the beach. She should have taken a different path to get to the pier from school, but this was the only way to go that didn’t immediately give away the destination, and she’d been with Diya and Min-seo when class let out. Min had started noticing how often Noelle’s trips to the beach had been, and she knew Diya had too, even if Diya wouldn’t comment on it. She saw it in the way their eyes lingered on her when she headed this way, or the way they both talked when she mentioned she was going down to the pier again.

She needed to be more careful. Otherwise, they’d start asking questions, ones she wasn’t sure she had the answer for yet.

And so, she took the long way there.

The ocean glittered pink, mirroring the sky as the sun lowered quietly behind it. In the distance, seagulls chittered, flying overhead, then landing around what must have been something to snack on. No one was around but Noelle and the birds, but she couldn’t help but feel like she wasn’t alone as she stepped onto the pier.

Her dress shoes thudded dully against the wood as she made her way to the end of the pier. No boats were docked. The pier she was at was smaller, the kind not as frequently used, perhaps because it was further away from the city than some of the others around the beach. Maybe it would have been busier, also, if it weren’t for the fact that it was April and sixty degrees—just a little too earlier in the year for tourists and beach lovers to spend all their waking time here. Give it a few more weeks and Noelle knew her trips would have to end. Or, at the very least, move elsewhere.

She stood at the railing. The seagulls had started to fight over the last scrap of food. The wind blew against her, forcing hair to come loose from the braid she’d confined it in this morning.

Suddenly, water below the pier erupted upwards as something emerged.

It grabbed her ankle.

“Boo!”

Noelle screeched and jumped backwards, kicking her ankle free. “What the hell!”

The creature responsible for Noelle’s jump laughed, falling back into the water as she continued to cackle. It was an odd sound, like something you’d hear from a dolphin, but more—for lack of a better term—human. Noelle still wasn’t used to the surreal combination of the hominid and the oceanic. It was like something from a sci-fi movie.

But then, so was everything else about her. Her eyes glowed yellow, her pupils dark slits; at the end of each finger was a sharp, claw-like nail meant for tearing into flesh; holding together those fingers was translucent webbing the same shade of brown as the rest of her skin. The slits on either side of her neck moved when she took a breath, and the scales on her cheekbones, shoulders, and forearms shone pink under the setting sun.

Most obvious of all, of course, was the tail.

Akarsha, tired now of laughing, pulled herself up onto the pier, sliding in between the railing so she could sit, her tail dangling over the side, still half in the water.

“Hi,” she said simply, as if she hadn’t just given Noelle a heart attack.

“You’re intolerable,” Noelle said.

“And yet you continue to tolerate me.” She grinned, showing off pointed teeth that would have sent anyone running. Even Noelle, who knew Akarsha meant no harm and wouldn’t ever hurt her, still got chills when seeing them sometimes. There was just something unsettling about knowing you’re sitting next to someone more than capable of killing you, even if you trusted them or considered them a friend.

The teeth disappeared as quickly as they’d been flashed, Akarsha’s attention pointed elsewhere. She reached for the bag Noelle carried, her still-wet hands dripping water onto the leather strap. “Did you bring it?”

“Not if you don’t stop getting my stuff all wet,” Noelle said.

“I live in _water_ , Frenchman. I can’t help it!”

Noelle pulled a dry hand towel from her bag and threw it at Akarsha’s face. “I never should have told you about that.”

“There are a lot of things you regret telling me,” Akarsha observed, using the towel to wipe her hands off. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

Noelle _meant_ about her name being French in origin, and she was going to say that before she realized bringing it up would only make Akarsha call her “Frenchman” another time.  

“Never mind,” she said instead, setting her bag down on the dock. Recently she’d switched to using the largest bag she had available, because it was easier to carry more things for Akarsha with less questions. This change was another thing she knew Diya had noticed but wouldn’t yet comment on.

Although, she had a feeling it was only time before her friends confronted her on what was up.

“Did you bring it today?” Akarsha asked again, throwing the now-damp towel to the side in favor of leaning in towards Noelle’s bag.

“ _Yes_ , I brought it, calm down,” Noelle mumbled, producing from her bag the official English-translated Volume 6 of _Naruto_. Akarsha’s pupils got visibly larger when she saw it, grabbing the manga from Noelle faster than Noelle could process. That was another weird thing about her. Her reflexes.

“Sweet!” She flipped through it quickly before reading the summary on the back, her eyes gleaming with excitement. It was stupid how excited she got over this series. Even stupider, though, was how much Noelle _liked_ that she liked it.

They’d discovered each other on accident a few months ago, when Akarsha saved Noelle from drowning one day when she was alone at the beach. Noelle hadn’t admitted to anyone but Diya and Akarsha that she’d never learned to swim, and she was lucky this time that Akarsha was there to help at all. For weeks afterwards, she’d racked her brain trying to figure out who or what it was that had saved her from drowning that day, her only memory of the event the feeling of running out of air and warm, _human_ arms around her, carrying her back to shore.

She didn’t see Akarsha that day, but she did when she went back to the beach weeks later, after dreaming over and over again about her unnamed, faceless savior. When the curiosity became too much to handle, she returned, and they met officially for the first time.

Perhaps Noelle would have been more disturbed at the prospect of meeting a mermaid if it weren’t for the fact that she’d had weeks already to come to the terms with the idea that, maybe, they existed, and, maybe, she’d met one already. As it was, she prided herself on how (relatively) calm she was when seeing Akarsha face-to-face the first time.

(Akarsha cited the fact that Noelle sat paralyzed for a good two minutes as reason to believe it was anything _but_ a calm response, but who was Akarsha to speak? Noelle thought she’d done well just to stay at all.)

Akarsha, having learned English from watching tourists and beach-goers during the summer and sailors and fishermen the rest of the year, explained that she _was_ the one who saved Noelle and that, wasn’t that kind of dumb of her to get in the water at all if she couldn’t swim? To which Noelle hadn’t bothered responding, because really it wasn’t any of _her_ business why she was or wasn’t in the ocean that day—to which Akarsha responded that she thought she had at least a _little_ business knowing all that, “considering I saved your life and all that.”

The relationship from there was built off of curiosity on both ends. Noelle, having just learned of any existence of merfolk, was understandably interested in knowing more, and Akarsha, having been told her whole life not to mess, interact, or engage with humans, figured Noelle could answer the burning questions she’d had for coming on seventeen years now.

And so began a symbiotic partnership based on knowledge. Eventually, this led to exchanging their culture and media, and after Noelle introduced Akarsha to a few of her favorite books (mostly to Akarsha’s disinterest), they’d landed on something that Akarsha _did_ like: _Naruto_.

Because of course she liked _Naruto_.

The two sat on the pier in silence as Akarsha dove into her manga and Noelle pulled out her homework for tonight. They had a system: Noelle would meet her at sunset at the pier, the two would speak for a bit, and then she would let Akarsha read as much of the volume she was currently on as she could while Noelle worked on homework. If she didn’t finish the current copy, Noelle would take it home with her and return again tomorrow with it until Akarsha finished the volume, at which point Noelle would return it to the school library and bring her the next one. They’d been doing this for about a week now.

The only downside to this was that, since Akarsha didn’t have any merfolk friends to discuss manga with, Noelle now knew way too much about _Naruto_. Like, to the point where she was becoming a little invested in it. She hadn’t told Akarsha yet, but she’d been considering starting the series so she could discuss it in full with Akarsha.

See what she meant earlier, about it being stupid how much she liked that Akarsha liked this?

After an hour, Akarsha closed her copy and sighed heavily, shaking her head. “Oh, Sasuke.”

Noelle glanced up from her Calculus worksheet. “Did you finish it?”

“Yep.” She slid it towards Noelle’s bag and leaned against the railing as if fatigued. “Kishimoto-san, you son of a bitch.”

Noelle tried to ignore Akarsha and return to her homework, but she knew now that Akarsha had nothing to occupy all her attention that she would go back to bothering Noelle.

Sure enough, a moment later, Akarsha leaned over until their faces were only a few inches apart, hovering over Noelle’s homework.

Noelle leaned back, her face inexplicably warm. “What do you want now?”

“What do you call that thing on your cheek?” She pointed to her own cheek as if to demonstrate.

“A mole,” Noelle said. With the way Akarsha had to sit so she could lean over, her hands were on either side of Noelle’s thighs. “Do you have to get this close?”

“I want to see it.”

“You can see it just fine a few inches away,” she mumbled. “I _know_ you can see in the dark.”

“Seeing in the dark and seeing from a distance are two different things. Can I touch it?”

“Sorry?”

“The mole,” she said. “Can I touch it? I wanna know what it feels like. I’ve never seen a human with one.”

“Lots of humans have them,” Noelle said. It did _not_ help Noelle’s nerves that Akarsha, being a mermaid, didn’t wear anything to cover herself. Although the nudity mostly didn’t bother her anymore, it was a different thing entirely to be an inch away from someone else’s very bare and very present boobs.

The last time they’d discussed this, though, Akarsha had told Noelle _she_ was the weird one for bothering to cover herself. _What does it even do, especially in the summer? If you’re hot you shouldn’t have to wear something just because, what, other people don’t want you to? It sounds dumb._ Noelle doubted bringing it up again would accomplish anything.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t matter if I don’t see anyone else,” Akarsha insisted.

Noelle caved. “Fine. Just don’t be weird about it.”

“What do you mean?”

She didn’t respond to that one, mostly because she was distracted by the rough feeling of Akarsha’s fingers. Her hands weren’t prune-y like you would expect from a person who lived underwater, but they were a lot tougher, almost like they were calloused. Akarsha was careful to avoid scratching Noelle with her nails when she touched her, and it was stupid—way, way stupid, even stupider than the Naruto thing—how Noelle noticed how gently she touched her, how she was caught off guard by the fact that she could feel Akarsha’s warm breath on her face, how she didn’t really mind this at all.

“Your face is warm,” Akarsha said. “And pink. Hey, we match now!”

She was referring to the permanent pink undertone her scales gave her, but at the moment Noelle thought she meant that Akarsha was blushing, too, and the dumbest thing of all was how ridiculously hopeful she got for that brief moment, thinking maybe Akarsha was responding like this too, maybe she liked Noelle a little too much to be normal too, maybe she’d developed what one might consider _feelings_ , too.

Then she realized what she’d assumed. And the hope dissipated into shame.

_Stupid_.

“It’s because it’s cold,” Noelle mumbled, feeling embarrassment spread all over. Of course Akarsha didn’t like her like that. Of course she’d allowed herself to get her hopes up. Of course she’d developed a crush at all. _Stupid. Stupid_. “I can hardly feel my face.”

“Humans are so weird about temperatures,” Akarsha said. Noelle stuffed her homework back into its binder, sliding it, her pencils, and the volume of _Naruto_ back into her bag before standing up and slinging it onto her shoulder. “Aww, you’re going?”

“I’ve got to get home,” Noelle said. “It’s almost nine.”

“That’s not that late,” Akarsha pouted.

“I’ll,” Noelle turned around, her face still hot with shame, gripping her bag strap until her knuckles were white, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Don’t forget to bring Volume 7!”

She didn’t reply to that, making her way down the pier as quickly as she could without seeming suspicious. It was only once she heard the telltale sound of Akarsha sliding back into the ocean that she burst into a full sprint.

For the first time in a long time, she ran all the way home. At least then she could tell herself the tears in her eyes were from the wind.

**Author's Note:**

> maybe ill write more ! who knows. im always a slut for mermaid aus


End file.
